The Summons – Chapter 7, Epilogue 06

On the housekeeping side of things, the current look of the website still isn’t the final one, but it’s creeping closer to it. After that, we’ll tackle the archives and other content. Sorry that that’s all taking longer than expected. ^_^;

As for today’s script, it introduces us to another important aspect of Eni’lef life: communication technology. Long range communications, to be more precise. As you can see, the Eni’lef cleverly draw on their nature as a cat-like species for that – making use of the fact that there is one sound that cat-likes can perceive more clearly and at far longer distances than any other: the sound of somebody opening a can.

The Eni’lef expanded on the concept by adding the names of the villagers to the cans. Normally, cats react to any can being opened as if the can had their name on it (they’re just naturally optimistic like that). The Eni’lef react only to can that actually do have their name on it, enabling a specific member of the tribe to be summoned, rather than all of them at once, as used to be the case for centuries. Progress.*

The can in question had K’ip’s name on it, and worked like a charm – he heard it right away, despite being more than six miles away from the village. And despite not being really hungry at the moment, since he’s in the middle of breakfast…while he had his mind very much set on venison, switching to fowl was a satisfying alternative on a number of levels, nutritional and retaliatory being the most important ones.
According to the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute domestic cats kill a median of 2.4 billion birds a year in the United States, which is a shame…but in the Evergreen Forest, this one bird clearly had it coming. >_>